Chapter Text
“I need you to get over here. Now.”
“Here what?” Tim mumbled, still fumbling to get the phone to his ear. “Huh?”
“Tim. Here. My house. I need you here now.”
Rachel always sounded stern. That was nothing new. At all. She delighted in bossing people (him) around. She loved the cowed look people (he) got when she raised an eyebrow all cool and Eastwood-y at them (him). Nothing new.
Except there was something in her voice now that Tim didn’t hear too often. A tremble, fear. He shoved himself off the couch. “I’ll be right-” she already hung up. “-there?”
He did not, contrary to the popular cliché- drive like a madman to get there. He may have pushed the speed limit, sure, but he wasn’t stupid. He had no idea what he was driving into. Calm and at the ready, that was Tim.
He parked in the seemingly-just-fine driveway, cataloguing everything he could see to determine if something was amiss. Nothing. Old Miss Thompson even waved at him from next door. He offered a wave back as he stepped onto Rachel’s porch. Going with his gut- maybe it actually wasn’t an emergency, stand down soldier- he knocked on her door. “U.S. Marshals, open up.”
She was glaring when she opened the door. “Very funny.”
He stayed on the porch. “I have a suspicion you got me here under false pretenses.”
“Not... really false,” she half-admitted. “I need some help.”
Still not moving. “With?” he drew the word out a few extra syllables.
“Getting a smartass off my porch. Will you come in already?” she yanked him in by the sleeve.
He looked around the living room. Nothing was on fire, nothing exploding, no Taliban occupying the corner by the window. The list of things he could possibly help with was growing shorter. “Rachel?”
She was fidgeting- this was also new. He hid a smirk, but was starting to feel a little happy. Rachel was uncomfortable. This was awesome. “Swear to me you won’t tell anyone about this.”
“Okay,” he said simply. Since when did he care about gossip- Rachel was the only one he told stories to anyway.
She nodded, trusting that. “You know I’ve been fixing up the basement?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “Cleaning things out, remodeling, turning it into a rec room for Nick or something?” Another quick pause. “There’s a rat.”
“A...” he stopped, let his brain catch up with his mouth. “You called me to catch a rat in your basement.”
“Kill it,” she corrected.
“Catch it,” he corrected right back. “There’s enough woods behind the house for it to-”
“Whatever, just get rid of it.” she waved her hands, shooing him towards the basement door.
“Yes ma’am,” he drawled, knowing she hated when he called her that. “It’s not rabid, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“To my health, yes,” he kept talking lazily, grabbing an oven mitt from the kitchen, some peanut butter crackers she always kept near the fridge for him or Nick to snack on. “If it bites me and I get hydrophobe, will you be the one to shoot me? Get me an empty shoebox, please.”
“‘He’s my partner, Art. I’ll do it,’” she half-quoted with a smirk, handing him a box from the hall closet.
He took it with a grin. “Bury me out behind the courthouse, okay? So I can haunt Raylan.”
“I could scatter your ashes across Harlan country,” she mused, watching him poke holes in the bottom of the box, tie a piece of wire from her utility drawer through one hole.
“They didn’t cremate Old Yeller,” he protested.
She pretended not to hear him. “I wonder if my new partner will be pretty.”
“Hey. Your old partner’s still in the middle of doing you a favor,” he looked up with a hurt expression. “You don’t think I’m pretty?”
She glared. “You’re gorgeous, doll. Now please get down there.”
“Rangers lead the way,” he mumbled, heading down into the basement. It was dark and damp, as all basements were required to be. “Last place you saw it?”
“Far corner, by the pipes,” she followed as far as the third step, then waited.
“Shut the door, will you? Won’t come out if there’s too much light,” he got busy setting up the shoe box, put the oven mitt on, using it to crumble up the crackers and scatter them on the box lid.
“Okay, you are way too at ease with what you’re doing for me to be comfortable,” she commented.
Tim smiled without meaning to. “Catching rats was one of our favorite activities,” he was distracted enough by setting up his trap that he didn’t really think about his words. “Scorpions too, but those motherfuckers we were happy to kill. Rats were good for getting rid of flies and spiders, shit like that, so we’d catch and release. Not dirty, like you think of. Not like city rats. Smart little things too. Always kinda surprised me that neither side trained rats to bring explosives into camp or something.”
He unspooled the wire so he could step back to the steps, not noticing Rachel’s silence. “I remember the first time we got this trap to work, somewhere near Ghazni. It was like we’d won the county science fair, so proud of ourselves. C.O. was this close to putting us up for commendation, I swear.”
He sat on the second step, feet on the first in case the rat came from underneath. He felt Rachel take a seat on the step above him. And then he realized she was quiet. He looked at her, caught the thoughtful expression on her face. “What?”
She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again. “You used shoe boxes over there?”
Half a shrug. “Empty artillery boxes. ’Bout the same size.” He fixed her with his version of the Rachel Eastwood-y Eyebrow. “But that’s not what you were wondering just now. So. I ask again. What?”
She regarded him carefully. “You only ever tell me funny or random stories from over there.”
Oh. “Oh.” Did he? A rustling over by the box interrupted that fun conversation. Tim pulled the wire quickly but not too hard, toppling the box over onto the lid, trapping the rat. It skittered for a second then went completely still, probably panicked. “Target acquired,” he threw over his shoulder, adding in a little snark for the hell of it.
“Thank God,” she sighed, not getting up.
“You’re welcome,” he stood, took the leftover wire and wrapped it around the box and lid, keeping it firmly shut. Then, feeling the weight of it, he frowned and peered into one of the holes he’d made. “Jesus, Rachel.”
“What?” she finally stood up, going for the door.
“It’s just a mouse,” he groaned. “A tiny little mouse. Not even a rat, just a-”
“‘Just’ nothing. I don’t want it in my house,” she snapped. “I don’t care what it is or if it shits gold. I want it gone.”
“Sorry, buddy,” he told the mouse. “Don’t feel bad. If you shit gold, I’d take you home.”
“It worries me that you talk nicer to vermin than you do to people,” Rachel said, twisting the door knob. Nothing happened. “Shit.” Nothing again. “No way.”
“What no way?” Tim started up the steps.
She halted him with a hand up. “Do not come closer to me with that box until I know I have a way out.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have a way out?”
She groaned. “Door is stuck. Jammed, something.” She kicked at it a few times. Nothing. “You want to try?”
“Can’t,” he groaned right back. “Ribs, remember?” The reason he’d been napping in the first place when she’d called- three cracked ribs from a nasty arrest two days ago.
“Damn it,” she sighed. “Sorry, yeah.” She checked her watch. “Well, my mom should be here in an hour or so, she’ll be able to break it open.”
“Your mom is scary,” he mumbled, setting Mouse Box down far away from Rachel, then joining her to sit on the steps again. “We’re still not telling anyone about this. Right?”
“Right,” she sat next to him this time, eyes unconsciously monitoring Mouse Box. “Back to my question.”
“Wasn’t a question,” Tim pointed out.
“Back to my personal and well-observed statement,” she amended. “You only tell me lighter stuff. Why is that?”
He shrugged. “Never thought about it.”
“Tim,” she shook her head a little.
“It’s true,” he stretched as far as he could, one hand touching his side carefully, bracing. “Never realized that.”
“Do you think I can’t handle the other stuff?” She didn’t say ‘bad’ stuff- she didn’t want him to think she’d judge anything. He knew she was good about things like that.
He was quiet for a minute, and she let him be. She was good at that too. “It’s not you, it’s me?” he finally offered.
She smacked his shoulder lightly. “Tim.”
Another shrug. “I mean it.” He settled back comfortably to lean on the next step up. “Got nothing to do with you, or me not trusting you or whatever. I just don’t like the other stories.”
“You can tell me, though,” she argued.
He glanced over his shoulder as though the door might magically open. “I don’t know about that.”
“Hey-”
He shook his head. “Hey Rachel, tell me in detail and exact words what it’s like to deal with racist and sexist assholes all day. What’s your world like? Or, even better, what’s it like dealing with well-intentioned people who don’t even realize they’re racist and sexist. Tell me so I can understand perfectly what it’s like. So you can heal.”
It was the most he’d said at one time in a long while, about something like this. She smiled, a little sad. “Point taken.”
He almost sighed. “And not saying the situations are the same. Just... I live in a different world than you do. Than everyone does. I don’t know how to make people understand that.”
She was quiet then, seeming to accept that. “Every time something bad happens to me on the job, someone worries that I’ll react a certain way because I’m black or a woman.” She said it with enough understanding that he was able to relax some more.
“Yep,” he drawled lightly. “And I’m a soldier. First few months, I swear Art thought I was going to have nightmares anytime someone fired a gun anywhere near me.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t sure if you noticed that.”
He snorted. “Course I did. But it’s not like I could tell him I hadn’t had nightmares since my second year overseas. Haven’t since. Some guys just... don’t.” He half-smiled. “I live in a different world.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it quickly. He just knew she was about to say that just because he didn’t have nightmares didn’t mean he didn’t have other problems, but luckily she stopped herself. She laughed instead. “I remember the first time I met you.”
Glad for lighter conversation, he let the half-smile grow full. “Did you think I was pretty then?”
“I thought you were too skinny,” she shook her head. “A decorated Army Ranger from Kentucky? I was expecting someone bigger.”
“Ouch,” he deadpanned.
She grinned. “But this sweet-looking, baby-faced, skinny kid comes in. In clothes that definitely weren’t his.”
“Hey, I bought that suit, it was mine,” he grumbled. “Just didn’t... fit perfectly.”
“You looked like a puppy,” she kept smiling. “I was terrified some fugitive was gonna break you in half.”
He grinned again, remembering their first assignment together. “I showed you, huh?”
“Ha,” she rolled her eyes. “When you laid that guy out? No, I think it was right before that, actually, that I started to rethink you.”
“Right before?” he looked at her, confused.
She nodded, tapping the inside of her right wrist. “That guy started spouting off that racist bullshit, and you holstered your gun. I remember thinking that was weird, I’ve seen so many rookies make the mistake of hiding behind their weapons too much. You put yours away, rolled up your sleeves a little. Calm, I remember that.”
He followed her gaze to his own right wrist. “Ah. So it was the tattoo. You like your men with a little bit of danger, do ya?”
She smacked him again. “Okay, the tattoo was surprising. But you were so calm and deliberate. And when you hit that guy, just once,” she shrugged, smiling almost fondly. “You didn’t lose control, and you obviously had more muscle than any of us thought. I realized maybe people underestimate you a lot. I could relate to that.”
Tim couldn’t help but smile too. He might never get used to being close to people like he had been with his unit, but he liked this. With Rachel. Different kind of partnership. “Everyone told me to be scared of you.”
“What?” she turned, eyes wide.
And he also liked antagonizing her. “Before Art paired us up. The other guys tried to warn me about you. You were scary, cold, only allowed two strikes instead of three before writing other marshals off.”
“Not just marshals,” she muttered.
“I was ready for you to be a drill sergeant,” he recalled. “But you were just... direct. Expected me to do the job, not be... super soldier, or traumatized, or crazy, or whatever else all the gossip about me was.”
She nodded. “You were the favorite topic of conversation for awhile. Come to think of it, you probably should thank Raylan for arriving when he did. Took all the heat off you.”
“I thank him by not shooting him every day,” he grumbled. He stretched again. “Wish we’d brought beer down here.”
“When I get this up and running, I’ll put a fridge in,” she promised.
He nodded his thanks. “So, a rec room for Nick?”
“Yeah,” she pointed to the far wall. “I have an extra TV and DVD player. Can get an old couch. A stereo, maybe. Some games. A pool table in the other corner.”
His raised eyebrow was back. “Nick plays pool?”
“No, but you do,” she smiled without looking directly at him.
He was about to feel uncomfortable with the feelings behind that... then thought one step farther. “Meaning, I can come down here and teach Nick how to play pool, thereby keeping him out of your hair for a bit longer?”
She grinned, unrepentant. “See? And to think people underestimate your intelligence, too.”
He pointed at her warningly. “So much beer.”
Rachel just nodded, agreeing to the terms. “I’ll owe you.”
“So much beer,” he repeated, resigning himself now. He checked on Mouse Box again, pretty sure Mouse was contentedly eating the peanut butter crackers. “What brought the remodeling idea on?” he asked as casually as he could.
She still saw right through him. “Yes, Tim, I’ve been just fine since my divorce. Thank you for asking.”
He held up his hands peaceably. Or defensively, just in case she decided to hit him again. “Okay.”
“I don’t ask you about your dating life,” she kept at it. “And you’ve never asked me about mine. It’s been so nice that way.”
“Okay,” he said again.
“Do you even have a dating life?” she wondered.
“And just what happened between you and Joe?” he asked back.
“Yeah, yeah,” she still smiled through her sigh. “I get it.” They were both settled back against the steps, content to be quiet for awhile. “I am glad, you know,” she said after a bit longer. “That Art stuck me with you.”
He smiled a little. Not at her, of course, but still. He smiled. “Me too. And I’m glad I haven’t gotten my two strikes yet.”
Rachel laughed. “Me too.”
The sound of the front door opening and Mrs. Brooks’s voice calling out interrupted the soon-to-be-uncomfortable moment. “Rachel?”
“Thank God,” they breathed in unison, standing up.
Tim went to retrieve Mouse Box while Rachel pounded on the door. “Mom? The basement door’s stuck!”
By the time Tim got up the steps, holding Mouse Box as far from Rachel as he could, the door splintered at the handle and was pried open, revealing Mrs. Brooks standing there with a crowbar in hand and a bored look on her face. Which, Tim had to admit, was pretty awesome.
The expression melted into a smile when she spotted Tim. “Tim, honey! I thought that was your truck out there,” she patted his shoulder, eyeing the box wrapped with wire tucked under his other arm. “And that is...?”
“There was a mouse,” Rachel explained, only a little embarrassed.
Tim nodded, so serious. “It tried to kill me with imaginary rabies,” he added helpfully, ducking when Rachel tried to hit him.
“All.. right then,” Mrs. Brooks got that tone she always got when Rachel and Tim reverted to snarking at each other. “You’ll stay for dinner, then?”
She always phrased them like questions but used words to make them commands. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Fine. But dispose of your friend first.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said again, so much more insolently.
“Don’t call me that,” she swatted at the back of his head as he moved past her to the back porch.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Strike two, Tim. Strike two.”